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A study led by scientists from the University of Manchester found that remote monitoring by means of smartphone apps has the potential to transform the medical care of patients having long-term health conditions.

The research, which was carried out on patients with rheumatoid arthritis, is said to offer the strongest evidence till date that smartphone technology can make best use of the time of both doctors and patients once the data is integrated into the NHS. In the research, a total of 20 patients were remotely monitored through a smartphone app.

Published in the journal Rheumatology, the research was funded jointly by Versus Arthritis and the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (NIHR CLAHRC) Greater Manchester.

The app was designed jointly by patients, clinicians and researchers. It enabled patients to input the symptoms they were facing each day and how it affected their lives. Their respective doctors used the data created by the app while undertaking face to face consultations.

According to the University of Manchester, the daily data derived from the smartphone app was integrated into the electronic health record at their hospital. The summarised data was displayed as a graph visible at the hospital’s outpatient visit.

The app, which is not available commercially to the public, was developed at the university’s Connected Health team at the Centre for Health Informatics.

The University of Manchester claims that the results of the study are a boost for the one in four people who live with a long-term condition in the UK but do not spend more than 1% of their time with a healthcare professional.

University of Manchester professor Will Dixon, the lead author of the study, said: “Understanding at a single consultation how symptoms change between visits, often six months apart, can be challenging.

“Patients find it difficult to recall their symptoms and short consultation times may limit how thoroughly a history is explored. Patients also reported that doctors could direct consultations in a way that did not always explore issues that the patients felt to be important.

“But by using their smartphone data, patients benefited from consultations being focussed around their own data, making discussions more personal.”